Frank's Day in the Kitchen
by Esme
Summary: Frank decides to cook Christmas dinner with all the trimmings - in the way only Frank can.


Title: Frank's Day in the Kitchen  
Author: Esme  
Date:??  
Category:  
  
Disclaimer: characters ... blah blah ... you recognise ... blah blah ... belong to ... blah blah ... someone else ... blah blah  
  
Author's Notes: I guess you could say this is my response to the Christmas challenge. I'm so excited about Christmas and then I was making Christmas pudding the other day and got even more excited about it, and then I got so excited I just had to write a fic. Okay so I'm exaggerating here. The last few fics that have been posted have been serious, heavy, depressing stuff, so I thought I'd lighten the mood!  
  
Dedication: to anyone who loves Christmas!! And to Jaye, coz chatting about fics at 2am is such fun!  
  
  
  
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Frank's Day in the Kitchen  
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Frank pored over the magazine with a furrowed brow. He didn't understand it all, but he was confident he could bluff his way through. He put on his white frilly apron - glad that no one was around to witness the outfit, but determined to protect his trousers. His kitchen bench was covered in supplies, he'd been on a shopping spree. Sultanas, currants, raisins, dried apricots, dried peaches, mixed peel, glace cherries, glace pineapple and numerous other varieties of dried or glace fruit. This was going to be one hell of a Christmas pud.   
  
  
Frank had never made Christmas pudding before, but there was always a first time. He'd invited all the Rats over for dinner. It was a week before Christmas but he'd felt like having a nice Christmas dinner, especially so he could prove he could actually cook. He'd rushed to the supermarket and picked up a copy of the Family Circle Christmas Edition. There were lots of pictures to help him out. The turkey and vegetables were all organised - they were sitting ready to be put in the oven. Now it was time for the pudding. He'd heard somewhere that you were meant to make puddings six months before Christmas so they had time to mature or something. How about six hours? That was gonna be heaps of time.  
  
  
Step 1: Chop fruit and mix with brandy and molasses. Leave overnight or for up to a week.   
  
  
Okay, he could do this. He chopped the fruit and chucked it in a bowl. 'Better just test the brandy,' he thought. He took a nice swig out of the bottle and then another - just to be sure. He sloshed the rest of the bottle over the fruit and got another bottle out of the cupboard in case he needed some more. 'Molasses?' he thought. He turned to the cupboard as he thought... Molassesgolden syruphoney! It's basically the same. He poured half a jar of honey over the fruit and mixed it all together. He decided it needed a little more brandy so he opened the new bottle and of course had to test that one too, before sloshing some more onto the fruit.  
  
  
The next step was to cream butter and brown sugar. Frank had some vague feeling that this was meant to be done with beaters in a big mixer machine. But he just chucked it in his little blender and away he went. Surprisingly the butter and sugar actually creamed together quite well in the blender. Next was to add four eggs Okay. He broke four eggs into the blender, picking out the bits of shell he'd dropped in. He pressed the button on the blender but the mixture just went all weird. He stopped and looked at it nah, he didn't even want to think about what that looked like. It was all separated - maybe this is what curdled was or something. He looked back to the recipe 'add four eggs little by little'. Oh well, he'd stuffed that one up a bit.  
  
  
He adopted his "she'll be right, mate" attitude and ploughed on. He tested the brandy again, just in case it had gone bad in the past 10 minutes. "Add sifted flour and spices." He didn't have anything to sift them with, so what the hell, he just chucked it all in with the rest. "Add fruit and mix well until combined." He added the overflowing floury-eggy mess from the blender to the fruit. Shit, the mixing bowl wasn't really big enough. Ah, what's the problem - just make a mess.  
  
  
"Spoon mixture into the centre of prepared calico." Calico? Prepared? He looked to the top of the page and read the instructions. "Soak a square of calico overnightboil for 20 minutessprinkle with flour."   
  
  
"What the bloody hell is calico?" he said out-loud. He looked at the picture. It was some sort of creamy coloured material. Actually it was kind of like those old singlets he had upstairs. He tasted some more brandy - to help him survive the journey upstairs. He came back with an old singlet. Soak overnight oh well, he dipped it in some water and wrung it out. Boil for 20 minutes hmmm - he stuck it in a saucepan with some water and let it boil for about five minutes while he tested some more of the brandy. He squeezed as much water as he could out of the supposed calico - but it was still pretty soggy as his ability to function properly was beginning to fade. He sprinkled it with flour, getting more on the bench and floor than on the 'calico'. It had taken him three hours to get this far. Next step was  
  
  
"Shit!" yelled Frank. The bloody turkey. He'd forgotten all about it. He turned the oven on as high as it would go and shoved the turkey and vegetables in. Back to the pud. He tipped the mixture out onto the singlet and shaped it into a rough circular mound. Now he was meant to gather the edges and tie it tightly with string. He had some problems getting all four corners into his hand, but eventually he had it - only to realise that he didn't have any string. He searched the whole house and all he could find was dental floss. "String is string is string" was his philosophical comment as he took yet another swig of brandy. After gathering the corners again he had a hard time trying to tie it up. His hands didn't seem to be performing these delicate fiddly tasks too well. Eventually it was tied, albeit loosely.   
  
  
What next? 'Place pudding in saucepan of water and boil for'  
  
"Five hours?" slurred Frank.  
"Shit."  
He had less than an hour before the whole station would be arriving. There was no time to boil a pudding for five hours. He stood there in his frilly apron straining his brain, which at this stage was slightly intoxicated, but he needed a bit more of that brandy to help him think. Then the brilliant idea hit him, of course!  
"The microwave!"  
  
  
Frank was pretty confident that about an hour in the microwave would be perfect for the pudding. He stood it in a casserole dish full of water and bunged it in the microwave and turned it on to high for one hour. Nothing to do now except sit back, relax and have a bit more brandy. Everything was under control.   
  
  
The next thing he knew he could hear something banging somewhere. He wasn't sure if it was someone at the door or it was just a splitting headache. Nope, it was someone at the door. As he slowly came to his senses Frank realised that the room was filling with smoke. "Shit! The turkey!" This time his alarm was not because there was danger of the turkey being undercooked, but rather the opposite.  
  
  
He ran and opened the door and without even bothering to greet his guests, he ran back to the kitchen to attend to the turkey. Gavin and Tommy followed trying to suppress their laughter and save Frank's house from burning down. They found a fire extinguisher and the shrivelled bird was put out with ease. Frank looked dejectedly at the blackened potatoes and the burnt-to-the-crisp carrots, it didn't seem like there was much he could save.  
  
  
By this stage almost everyone was standing around in Frank's kitchen. Tommy and Gavin were trying not to go into convulsions with their laughter, and Tayler and Woodsie weren't sure which was more amusing - the boys or the burnt bird. Dave stood watching with a bemused grin. For once even he was lost for words. Frank was almost ready to admit defeat when he excitedly remembered the pudding. He ran to his microwave and opened it with anticipation  
  
  
He removed a revolting gooey mess. The pudding mixture had oozed out of the material and mixed with the water, and the water had soaked into the pudding and generally made it all look revolting. Some bits were slopping everywhere and others were as hard as rocks, where it had been overcooked. Now Frank was definitely ready to admit that he had failed. The truth was out - he couldn't really cook. He was just glad that Rachel wasn't here to witness this disaster. It was going to be hard enough to live this down with all the guys that were there. But Rachel would never let something like this rest. Of course she would hear about it, but she wouldn't have seen it so  
  
  
There was another knock at the door. Bloody hell. He left the members of the Water Police in his kitchen and went to answer the door. Yep, just his luck, it was Rachel. He'd never live it down. Never. He might as well end his life now.   
  
  
She grinned at him. "Like the outfit Francis. The frilly apron really suits you."  
Frank just looked back at her. Only then did he notice she was carrying a slab of beer. His eyes lit up as he drooled at the sight. "I could really do with a beer right now."  
"Yeah?" replied Rachel, "looks like you've been drinking a bit already."  
Then Frank noticed Helen coming up behind Rachel. She was carrying enough pizza to feed a football team. Or alternatively - a hungry bunch of water police.   
  
  
"What'd ya bring the pizza for? I was cookin' Christmas dinner!" He tried to sound hurt, but he was secretly overjoyed.   
"Well the way we figured it Holloway, is that you can't cook." Rachel was blunt, yet honest.   
"So Frank," added Helen, "we decided that your Christmas dinner probably wouldn't work, so we brought some backup supplies. And judging from the smoke and the smells wafting out this door, you should be glad we did."  
  
  
"All right, all right, I'm over the moon that you brought pizza," said Frank. "The turkey's black, the potatoes are charcoal, and the pudding's just a gooey disgusting mess. But" he paused as he took yet another swig from the bottle in his hand. "the brandy is bloody good."  
  
  
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END  
  
  
Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!!!  
feedback - erinwilson@trump.net.au


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